SEMANTIC DIFFRENTIAL SCALE

INTRODUCTION:- sementic diffrential scale is most effective and

most widely used technique nowadays
In 1967 osgood, suci and tannebaum introduced this method for the first
time in their book, the measurement of meaning
Although the original purpose of the scale was not necessarily to measure
the assessment of attitude, the procedure was well adopted for attitude
assessment

DEFINITION:-“ semantic diffrential scale is atype of rating scale

designated to measure the connotative meaning of object, ,events, and
concepts. These connotation are used to derive the respondents attitude
towards the object, event and concept”
EXAMPLE:- While the word “heart” is defined as the organ that pumps
blood around the body. Its connovative meaning is love or heartache. The
feeling towards a particular subject.

USAGE OF SEMANTIC DIFFRENTIAL SCALE:-

 Patient satisfaction survey
 Customer satisfaction survey
 Employee survey
 Marketing survey
 Operational research
 Personality measurement
 Clinical psychology

DESIGNING SEMANTIC DIFFRENTIAL SCALE:-

For the preparation of semantic diffrential scale, adjective pairs are
used as depicted in table
 The bipolar adjective pair can be used for a waide variety of subject
 The adjective pairs are selected according to the objective of the
survey
 The adjective pairs can be groued into three categories, and each
survey question usually includes a few point from each category.
These category are evaluation, potency and activity
The sementic differential scale measures peoples reaction to stimulus
words and concepts in terms of rating or bipolar scales defined with
contrasting adjectives at each end an example of sementic differential scal
is

GOOD - - - - - - - BAD
3 2 1 0 1 2 3
GOOD - - - - - - - BAD
7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ADJECTIVE PAIRS USED FOR CONSTRUCTION OD

SEMANTIC DIFFRENTIAL SCALE:-

EVALAUTION POTENCY ACTIVITY

Good-bad Hard-soft Active-passive
Kind-cruel Strong-weak Fast- slow
Wise-foolish Heavy-light Hot- cold
Beautiful- ugly Deep-shallow Motivated-aimless
Happy-sad Potent-impotent Moving-still
Sociable-unsociable Large-small excitable
Friendly-unfriendly Simple-complex Alive-dead
Willing- unwilling Difficult-easy Emotional-
unemotional
Honest- dishonest Submissive-assertive Bright-dim
EX OF SEMANTIC DIFFRENTIAL SCALE TO ASSESS
THE BELIEF ABOUT HIV/ AIDS

cure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 death
No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 punishment
punishment
Social 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Social
acceptance rejection
Affordable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Expensive
treatment treatment
Normal life 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Miserable
life

Eg of semantic differential scale to assess the belief about

HIV/AIDS
ADVANTAGE OF SEMANTIC DIFFRENTIAL SCALE:-
 A convenient method to assess the beliefs, attitude and value In
quantitative form
 Easy to administer
 Provides reasonable valid and relaiable quanititative data

DISADVANTAGE OF SEMANTIC DIFFRENTIAL SCALE:-

 It is difficult to select the relevant concept, which are appropriate for
any given investigation
 It is time consuming to find the appropriate adjective pair
 “ THRUSTONE SCALE”
INTRODUCTION:- In psychology, the thrustone scale was the
first formal technique for measuring an attitude.it measuring attitudes
towards religion. It is made up of statement about a particular issue, and
each statement has a numerical value indicating how favourable or
unfavourable it is judge to be

HISTORY:- it was developed by LOUIS LEON THRUSTONE in 1928 as

a means of measuring attitudes towards religion. Thrustone was one of the
first and most productive scaling theorist.

DEFINITION:-A Thurstone scale is a way of measuring people's

attitudes along a single dimension by asking them to indicate whether they
agree or disagree with each of a large set of statements that are about that
attitude

PURPOSE:- This kind of scale is used to measure peoples attitude towards

afairly clear and one dimensional concept, using a number of statement
that vary in how they express a positive or negative opinion about the main
concept

CONCEPT
• Thurstone Scale is made up of statements about a particular issue, and
each statement has a numerical value indicating how favourable or
unfavourable it is judged to be.
• Then it administered to people , where they check each of the statement
they are agree or disagree.

CONSTRUCTION OF THRUSTONE SCALE ( METHOD OF EQUAL

APPERING INTERVALS)

 DEVELOPING THE FOCUS:- first decide on the concept or theme to

which the respondent has to rate.define the focus for the scale and the
purpose for which it has to be created
 The description of this concept should be as clear as possible so that the
person who are going to create the statements have a clear idea of what
will be measured
 GENERATING POTENTIAL SCAL ITEMS:- the next step is to
create a large set of candidate statement (eg 80-100) because the final
scale items are selected from this pool. All of the statement are worded
similarly-that they do not differ in grammer or structure
 RATING THE SCALE ITEMS:- the next step is to have the
participants (i.e judges, ie approximately 50 or more) rate each
statement on a 1-11 scale in terms of how much each statement indicates
a favourable attitude towards a particular concept
 It is not that the judge rating their attitude towards a concept or whether
they would agree or disagree with the statement towards the concept.
 It is to rate their “favourableness” of each statement in term of an
attitude towards a concept for eg:AIDS, where 1 =” extremely
unfavourable attitude towards people with AIDS” and 11= “extremely
favorable attitude towards people with AIDS”
 COMPUTING SCALE SCORE VALUES FOR EACH TIME:-
 The next atep is to analyze the rating data. For each statement, from 50
judges values, the median and the interquartile range is computed
 The median is the value above and below which 50% of the ratings fall.
The first quartile is the value below which 25% of the cases fall and
above which 75% of the cases fall- in other words the 25th percentile
 The median is the 50th percentile. The third quartile Q3 is te 75th
percentile
 The interquarile range is the difference between third and first quartile
or Q3-Q1
 These values can be computed easily with any introductory statistics
programme or with most spreadsheet programmes
 To facilitate the final selection of items for the scale, sort the table of
medians and interquartile range
 SELECT THE FINAL SCALE ITEMS:- the statement that are
selected should be at equal intervals across the range of medians
 Within each value ,the statement with smallest interquartile range is
selected
 This is the statement with the least amount of variability across
judges, and also, look over the candidates statement at each level and
select the statemet that makes the most sense, if the best statistical
choice is a confusing statement, the next best choice is selected
 ADMINISTERING THE SCALE:-the final slected items make a
single thrustone scale to measure the attitude towards a concept. This
is given to the samples to measure thr attitude. The participants have
to either agree or disagree with each statement. To get the person total
 score, get the average value for the scores of all the items that person
agreed with
ADVANTAGE:- it is important to note that there are 11 attitude positions
because in a scale with odd number of parameters, it is easier to identify a
neutral position
DISADVANTAGE:-
 Thrustone scales are not widely used for marketing research because
the are time consuming during preparation
 The rating may be influenced by the judges personal attitude
 Different individuals can obtain exactly the same score from agreeing
with quite different items
 It does not obtain information about the intensity of agreement with
the ratings.